Today, the Cancer Moonshot is hosting a summit at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. as part of a national day of action that also includes more than 270 events in communities across the United States. Vice President Joe Biden will join over 350 researchers, oncologists and other care providers, data and technology experts, patients, families, and patient advocates, among others, will come together at Howard University. They will be joined by more than 6,000 individuals at events in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam. This is the first time a group this expansive and diverse will meet under a government charge is to double the rate of progress in our understanding, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care of cancer...

In the course of one short week, no less than 3 different models have emerged for sharing big data in the pharmaceutical industry. The highest profile of these ‒ called Project Data Sphere (PDS here) ‒ was announced earlier today with the official opening of an online resource to share clinical trial data for use in cancer research.

Starting next Monday, March 5, Kenneth H. Buetow, former director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology at the National Cancer Institute, is joining Arizona State University as director of Computational Sciences and Informatics in the Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative (CASI). Read More »

...Linda Pickle has spent decades using maps and other spatial analyses to gather insights from cancer data. She likely had the first copy of Geographic Information System software at the National Institutes of Health, NCI’s parent agency, she told Nextgov recently, and she’s watched as visualization data went from “little better than crayons” to Google Maps applications that nearly anyone can use...

canSAR is a new cancer database launched earlier this week by the U.K. Institute of Cancer Research. It contains 1.7 billion experimental results and utilizes artificial (AI) intelligence technology to discover the cancer treatments of the future. It is an integrated knowledge-base that brings together multidisciplinary data across biology, chemistry, pharmacology, structural biology, cellular networks and clinical annotations. The goal is to further improve cancer research and drug discovery by providing free access to the knowledgebase and associated resources by researchers from across different disciplines. There are a growing number of available cancer databases and information portals. Read More »

The need to rapidly and efficiently share new data in cancer research was recently, and powerfully, highlighted by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden as part of the Cancer Moonshot initiative. The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) and TransCelerate BioPharma, Inc. (“TransCelerate”) announce today the open availability of a new CDISC Therapeutic Area (TA) Standard for Breast Cancer. The CDISC global TA standards can streamline the way clinical research is conducted so that data can be readily shared among clinicians, researchers and regulators around the world, thus leading to more rapid and “smarter” research...

Project Data Sphere, LLC (PDS), an independent not-for-profit initiative of the CEO Roundtable on Cancer’s Life Sciences Consortium (LSC), announced today the launch of a new data sharing platform (www.ProjectDataSphere.org), with the goal of advancing research to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world...

Educating referring physicians about the cancer risks from imaging exams is key to reducing patient exposure to medical radiation, according to an article in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Other important elements of reducing exposure are more assertive radiologists and increased use of healthcare IT. Read More »

Knowing the likely course of cancer can influence treatment decisions. Now a new prediction model published today in Lancet Oncology offers a more accurate prognosis for a patient's metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The approach was as novel as the result - while researchers commonly work in small groups, intentionally isolating their data, the current study embraces the call in Joe Biden's "Cancer Moonshot" to open their question and their data, collecting previously published clinical trial data and calling for worldwide collaboration to evaluate its predictive power...

Kenneth H. Buetow, a human geneticist and former director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology at the National Cancer Institute, is joining Arizona State University as director of Computational Sciences and Informatics in the Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative. Read More »

July 17, 2013 | On Monday, researchers released the largest database of cancer-related genetic variations—the genomes of the 60 cancer cell lines represented by the NCI-60 list. The project was published online in Cancer Research. Read More »

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is holding an Innovation Day on Monday, May 15th at the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C. The day will feature presentations from teams across HHS who are using open source, collaborative, and entrepreneurial methods like design thinking and lean startup to improve how their office or agency delivers on the HHS mission. The day will also feature a panel on deploying creative thinking to improve work in government, and innovative speakers from government and the private sector.

Join us for HHS Innovation Day on May 15th at the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., where you’ll experience first-hand how new approaches and creative thinking can advance our work in government. You’ll hear from stellar employees at HHS who are using entrepreneurial methods like design thinking and lean startup to improve how their office or agency delivers on the HHS mission. The day will also feature a panel on deploying creative thinking to improve work in government, and innovative speakers from government and the private sector.

Computer clouds have been credited with making the workplace more efficient and giving consumers anytime-anywhere access to emails, photos, documents and music as well as helping companies crunch through masses of data to gain business intelligence. Read More »